The latest revenue revision from Apple, while they seem to want to blame it on China exclusively, does seem to tally with a generally perceived slowdown on Apple's products.

I know I, and many people I know who are into this stuff, are finding that we just don't buy stuff at the same rate as we once did. My iPhone 8 is fine - I would normally be anxious to swap it by now, but I'm really not. My 2015 MBP is, in my opinion, a better machine than anything they sell at present all told, so I won't be replacing that anytime soon.

Is Apple falling victim to the slowdown in computer hardware advances, and their own quality and product longevity? Are you buying Apple things less frequently than you once did?

Not buying as much Apple stuff, have not bought a new iPhone since the 6s came out, and just recently bought my first new Mac since 2011. Likely won't upgrade the Mac again for another 8-10 years if at all, if Apple goes the way I think they will. Not buying the services either, I only have the free iCloud storage and refuse to rent music via Apple music. Still buy music from the iTunes Store a few times a year with iTunes gift cards purchased with credit card points.

If you have super high end workflows, that demands the high core count stuff, there is a lot going on to be excited about. For those people it's very exciting, having 28+ cores in a single chip, rather than needing dual socket systems, and as a result a far lower power demand. These systems just are not on Apple's radar, they just don't target people high end workflows anymore, like dropping the Xsever and Mac Pro, no I'm not counting the overpriced ancient tech dinosaur from 2013.

For general consumers there isn't much exciting going on in computers other than some of the advances in peripherals, which Apple has either moved away from, like monitors, or keeps making worse, like keyboards and mice.

I suspect most of Apple's "innovation" will be to force more and more rental services, like Apple Music and iCloud storage on users. I expect to see Apple follow in Adobe's footsteps for non-bundled software very soon, or just abandon the non-bundled software altogether. The next few generations will be very telling, I could see them offering only small drive configs across the board on computers, 200-250GB to push more users into cloud services. They could also drop iPhone's back into the 16-32GB range for the same reason. Doing so would increase margins, since they are unlikely to drop prices.

Before cell phones, telephones were white goods. You bought them once and then never again. We'll get there with cell phones too, eventually. Same with computers. Innovation isn't guaranteed within any one technological venture, sometimes you can get no better owing to physical limitations of the device or the people using them. We're no longer excited about steam engine improvements, but this drove technological innovation for more than 100 years. We're approaching this point the physical space of chip design, and barring a switch to small, trapped qubit computers, it isn't likely we're going to see a massive material improvement in innovation rate let alone feature additions in cell phones or personal computers.

What is Apple's vision? Jobs wanted to make life easier for people through computation, even to the point of wearable computers like phones. Vision accomplished, what's next? Making money for shareholders?

What is Apple's vision? Jobs wanted to make life easier for people through computation, even to the point of wearable computers like phones. Vision accomplished, what's next? Making money for shareholders?

Health. He may be a bit of a beancounter, but I believe Cook is quite genuine about his strong feelings on privacy, making Apple an excellent contender for this. Over the next ten to twenty years, we'll hopefully crack some big sensor challenges, like measuring blood pressure and blood glucose from a wrist-worn device. Heck, maybe even make food intake counts more automatic and make fitness suggestions from that.